[nylug-talk] are we about to lose something?

[Gary Mort]

geeknoob wrote:
> Silly question:
> Even if a Novell developer made Samba work for Novell's Suse (and SLES 
> I assume) - will they (MS or possibly Novell - in fear of loosing 
> market shares to other distro's or in fear of repercussions from MS) 
> allow said developer to open that fix/addon/patch/whatever to the rest 
> of the FLOSS community?  (Regardless of the developers' feelings on 
> the matter regarding what he created.)
> Or, better yet, because Novell users of Suse alone are pardoned, will 
> he release it, then all the other distro's be sued for trying to use 
> or expand on it?
My feeling first of all is that looking over the terms of the agreement, 
at no time does Novell admit that there are any Microsoft patents being 
infringed(nor does Microsoft admit to infringing on Novell patents), 
they merely say that any patents relating to a broad set of 
areas(including Samba and CIFS) that MAY be valid each company grants 
the other company(and users of that companies products as well as 
developers contributing to that company) rights to those patents.

So then, the issue comes into play that if a developer wished to 
investigate this pre agreement, there are a host of laws Microsoft could 
swing at them.  And if they do have the technology patented, the 
developer could be sued for patent infringment(and of course, even if 
the patent isn't valid, most developers don't have the deep poclets to 
fight microsoft).

Post agreement, a developer can investigate these issues without fear of 
a lawsuit, as long as they are doing so to extend Novell's version of 
linux.  After determining the cause and the possible fixes, the 
developer can make an educated decision about what solution is most 
likely to avoid any valid patents held by both companies(for example, if 
Microsoft truely is just truncating passwords which are too long before 
encrypting them, can it really be argued that this is an 'invention' 
worthy of a patent?).  Thus the developer can now realease code back to 
the open source community.

There is still the danger that Microsoft may insist that the 'invention' 
really is their IP, but that danger exists today regardless of this new 
agreement.  This agreement gives developers who wish to work on 
integration with Microsoft products the ability to do so without fear of 
lawsuits - but it does not bind the developer into recognizing 
Microsoft's patent claims as valid.

Novell does not have the power to validate or invalidate Microsoft's 
patents.  All they can do is come to an agreement which says "there is a 
chance we might be infringing, and based on that chance we will pay you 
X dollars to avoid court cases".  It would be up to the courts and the 
patent office to decide whether or not a patent is valid.

Sure, Novell will work with Microsoft on their own to increase 
interoperability.  And doing so may come to them inventing something new 
which is their Intellectual Property.  And as they are concerned about 
their bottom line, they may decide to release it as open source or keep 
it proprietory.  But even then, the open source community benefits.  If 
a company would be interested in setting up a Linux file server to 
compare cost/performance to their Windows servers today, but due to the 
password issue this is a no go - if that issue was fixed - even assuming 
Novell owns the solution - the company will now have a Novell SUSE 
server sitting in their data center.  They will be able to try out other 
solutions.  Maybe they will discover a cost benefit to setting up their 
web servers on Linux, instead of Windows.  And since web servers don't 
require that propietary samba integration stuff, they go
with Red Hat Linux instead for those servers.

In short, I see this arrangement as a good thing for Linux and good for 
the Open Source community.  As long as the community doesn't fall into 
the trap of thinking this agreement means Microsoft is friendly to them. 

As long as we drive decisions based on business needs and business 
costs, cases can be made for when Linux is appropriate, and when it is 
not.  And if a particular solution requires closer integration with 
Windows than open source solutions allow, having a more well integrated 
Linux solution for those cases is a plus.

In no way do I think Microsoft is doing this out of the goodness of 
their hearts.  But nor do I assume this is some trap.  Considering the 
reciprocal nature of this agreement, it is possible that Novell caught 
Microsoft with their hands in the cookie jar using Novell propietary 
code designed for Linux in Microsoft products.  Rather than face a major 
licensing cost, or pulling a product, Novell forced Microsoft to this 
agreement instead which nets them a ton of money, and gives them access 
to specific technologies that their own customers have been saying they 
need integrated.

Could Microsoft be digging a trap for Linux and Novell?  Yes they 
could.  And I wouldn't trust them at all.  However, I certainly wouldn't 
turn up my nose at any discoveries made through this event either(I 
can't count the number of times I've seen people in my organizationgm 
complaining about what a failure the corporate file sharing solution is 
because some passwords don't work, and it takes them a whole extra FIVE 
minutes to change a password when it doesn't work.  About how this is 
all the fault of samba and they certainly would not recommend Linux to 
their clients because of this gross failure.  Is it really worth 
alienating those people and decreasing the market share of Linux just to 
avoid 'tainted' agreements?)